Of Love. (13)

AUTOB. So soon as Pemptides had done, and my father was about to say something in answer to his question, another messenger came from the city in Ismenodora’s name, requesting Anthemion to come to her; for that the tumult increased, and the presidents of the games could not agree, while one was of opinion that Baccho was to be demanded and delivered into their hands, and the other thought it an impertinence to meddle with that which nothing concerned them.

AUTOB. Thus Anthemion being gone, my father addressed himself to Pemptides by name, and so entered into the following discourse: You seem to me, sir, to have hit upon a very strange and nice point, or rather, as I may so say, to have endeavored to stir things which are not to be moved, in reference to the opinion which we have of the Gods, while you demand a reason and demonstration of every thing in particular. For it is sufficient to believe according to the faith of our forefathers and the instructions of the country where we have been bred and born, than which we cannot utter or invent a more certain argument;

For surely all the wit of human brain

This part of knowledge never could attain.

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AUTOB. For this is a foundation and basis common to all piety and religion; of which if the steady rule and decreed maxims be once disordered and shaken, all the rest must totter and become suspected. And no question but you have heard what a clamor was raised against Euripides when he made this beginning of his Melanippe:

Jupiter, if his name be so;

’Tis only by hearsay that I know.

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AUTOB. But when he exhibited the tragedy a second time, he seems to have had such a confidence in the lofty style and elaborate eloquence of his work, that he thus altered the verse:

Jove, for we own he has received that name

From truth alone, and not from common fame.

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AUTOB. What difference then is there between calling in question the name of Jupiter and Minerva, and doubting of the name of Cupid or Love? For it is not of late that Love has challenged altars and sacrifices, neither is he a foreigner started up out of any barbarian superstition, as were the Attae and the Adonii, introduced by I know not what sort of hermaphrodites and idle women. Nor has he clandestinely crept into honors no way becoming him, to avoid the accusation of bastardy and being unduly enrolled in the catalogue of the Gods. But when you hear Empedocles thus saying,

And friendship too (observe my song)

Is like to these, both broad and long;

But this thou must not think to find

With eyes of body, but of mind,

AUTOB. you ought to believe all this to be said of Love. For Love is no more visible than any of the rest of the ancient Deities, but apprehended only by opinion and belief; for every one of which if you require a reason and demonstrative argument, by enquiring after every temple and making a sophistical doubt upon every altar, you shall find nothing free from inquisition and malicious slander. For, that I may go no farther, observe but these:

I do not Venus see with mortal eyes,

The Goddess unto whom we sacrifice;

Yet this is she that mighty Cupid bare,

Whose offspring all terrestrial beings are.

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AUTOB. Therefore Empedocles gives her the epithet of the Giver of Life, and Sophocles calls her Fruitful; both very aptly and pertinently. For indeed the great and wonderful work of generation is properly the work of Venus, where Love is only an assistant when present with Venus; but his absence renders the act itself altogether irksome, dishonorable, harsh, and ungrateful. For the conjunction of man and woman without true affection, like hunger and thirst, terminates in satiety, and produces nothing truly noble or commendable; but when the Goddess by means of Love puts away all loathsome glut of pleasure, she perpetuates delight by a continual supply of friendship and harmony of temper. Therefore Parmenides asserts Love to be the most ancient of all the works of Venus, writing thus in his Cosmogony:

Of all the Gods that rule above,

She first brought forth the mighty Love.

AUTOB. But Hesiod, in my opinion, seems more philosophically to make Love the eldest of all the Gods, as from whom all the other Deities derive their beginning. Therefore, should we deprive Love of the honors which are decreed him, the ceremonies we ascribe to Venus will be no longer in request. For it is not sufficient to say, that some men reproach Love and load him with contumelies, but abstain from giving her an ill word; for upon the same theatre we hear these scandals fixed upon both:

Love, idle of himself, takes up his rest

And harbors only in the slothful breast.

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AUTOB. And in another place thus upon Venus:

She does not the name of Cypris only own,

But by a hundred other names is known:

She’s hell on earth, continued violence,

And rage subduing all the force of sense.

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AUTOB. As indeed we may say of the rest of the Gods, that there is not one that has escaped the scandalous jibes of illiterate scurrility. Look upon Mars, as in a brazen sculpture, possessing the place just opposite to Love, how highly has he been honored, how lowly degraded by men?

Swine-snouted Mars, and as a beetle blind, —

’Tis he, fair dames, disorders all mankind.

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AUTOB. Homer also gives him the epithets of murderous and Jacka-both-sides. Moreover, Chrysippus, explaining the name of this Deity, fixes a villanous accusation upon him. For, says he, Ares is derived from ἀναιρεῖν, which signifies to destroy; thereby affording an occasion for some to give the name of Ares or Mars to that same proneness and perverse inclination of men to wrath and passion, and to quarrel and fight one with another. Others affirm Venus to be nothing but our concupiscence; that Mercury is no more than the faculty of speech; that the Muses are only the names for the arts and sciences; and that Minerva is only a fine word for prudence. And thus you see into what an abyss of atheism we are like to plunge ourselves, while we go about to range and distribute the Gods among the various passions, faculties, and virtues of men.